First Knight

First Knight (1995)

12 corrected entries

(4 votes)

Corrected entry: Malagant imprisons Guinevere in an 'oubliette', which is French for 'place of forgetting', a dungeon where prisoners are left to rot. But oubliettes were only in use during the Middle Ages, centuries after King Arthur's time, and even then they were not platforms over pits as the film depicts. They were dungeon cells beneath the castle floors.

Correction: It's not impossible or even unlikely that Malagant would design his own style of cell. And "oubliette" was a word long before the dungeons named this were concieved.

Phixius

Correction: Many castles contain deep, windowless spaces, but no medieval documents say these were prisons. They were only identified as prisons by later historians and archaeologists. Many archaeologists and historians now think these were storerooms and not prisons at all. So the idea of Guinevere incarcerated in an oubliette is doubly incorrect! Isn't this all too pedantic? If King Arthur existed, he lived in the seventh century, long before castles were built. The legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table are usually set in a vague, romantic past, somewhat outside documented history. Most films about King Arthur show knights wearing fifteenth century style armour, living in huge, elaborate castles that could probably not be built, even in 2020! These films are romantic fantasies and should never be regarded as history. If you want something realistic look out for the 1972 British TV series "Arthur Of The Britons" which showed Arthur as a seventh century warlord.

Corrected entry: When Guinevere's coach is attacked and she tells her maids to jump out the coach door is torn off by a tree, but after the rescue when the coach returns the door is back on.

Correction: Actually if you pay closer attention to the scene there are two coaches. One carries the females the other carries the males. Perhaps the coach you speak of was the second coach.

Corrected entry: When Lancelot is fighting with the leader of the bad guys, you can clearly see that Lancelot throws the leader's sword up in the air, but when Lancelot is cutting him, you can see the sword back in his right hand.

Correction: The item he is holding might be his dagger which he drew during the fight.

Corrected entry: Towards the end, in the Great Square, Maligant sends his men in to burn the city. Immediately, the Knights of the Round Table start to defend their city. One of the Knights is shot by an arrow, and is presumably dead. However, at the end when King Arthur is floating in the lake, the knight is fine.

Correction: Actually two Knights are shot. First, Sir Mador is shot and killed. Second Knight is Sir Christophe. He is shot in the arm. I can see him in the end scene when Arthur is floating on the lake. I can't see Mador anywhere.

Corrected entry: Many of Arthur's knights are shown using bows at the battle of Leonesse. This is a glaring historical error, as the code of chivalry borne by all medieval knights strictly forbade the use of ranged weapons in combat. Killing an enemy at a distance was considered dishonorable.

Correction: Those troops are archers.(Which is fairly obvious) Archers weren't actually Knights themselves, but they were a core part of any army. You can also see Malagants men using crossbows in the ambush and the final battle.

Corrected entry: In the first reference to his people burning in the church Lancelot relives the event in his mind without verbal explanation. Guinevere responds to his anguish by specifically mentioning the church. How did she know about it?

Correction: Lancelot and Guinevere had previous conversations in which he indicates a secret anguish from his past. She could have guessed what his secret was by his reaction to the burning church - a reaction not shared by any other knight.

Corrected entry: Around the time that it was theorized King Arthur was around, chain mail (which they are prominently wearing), did not exist...neither did plate-glass windows...or 14th century French chateaus.

Correction: Chain mail was invented by the Celts in at least 300 BC. See http://www.barca.fsnet.co.uk/Rome-weapons-armor.htm.

Correction: Chateaus have been around since the 3rd century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A2teau.

Corrected entry: The stories of King Arthur take place in the Dark Ages, between 500-1000 AD. In the movie, lots and lots of people, mostly Arthur and his knights, wear blue clothes. Yet blue dye wasn't used in Europe until Marco Polo brought it from China in 1274, and even then it was extremely expensive.

Correction: Woad was an extremely well-known blue dye, used for thousands of years in northern Europe (see http://www.botgard.ucla.edu/html/botanytextbooks/economicbotany/Isatis/). Far from being a rare and expensive colour, blue would have been one of the most common colours available.

J I Cohen

Corrected entry: Right at the end, when a burning arrow is shot at the "floating tomb" in order to set it on fire, flames appear on it before the arrow hits it.

Correction: The arrow ignites the vapors from the oil used to soak the tinder and body, therefore, it doesn't have to hit the tomb itself to light the tinder.

Correction: If it were gasoline the vapors igniting would be totally plausible. Oil, no.

Corrected entry: One of Malagant's knights holds Guinevere captive and tells Lancelot to throw down his sword. Lancelot drops the weapon at his own feet and takes a few steps forward to reason with the knight. Later on when the knight is dead, Lancelot simply bends down and picks up his sword from the ground. How did it get there? By right it should have been a few yards BEHIND him.

Correction: Lancelot actually throws his sword ahead of him, not down at his feet. When he's reasoning with the knight, he only takes a few steps forward. After Guinevere shoots the knight, Lancelot only has to turn around and reach a little bit forward, to his right, to pick up his sword.

Roxy

Corrected entry: At the end, Lancelot takes up Excalibur and slays Malagant with it, yet there's no blood to be seen on Malagant's body when he falls dead. There's no blood on Excalibur either when Lancelot carries it to Arthur's deathbed.

Correction: If you look closely at Meleagant's neck when his head falls for the last time you can see blood on his neck. It is assumed that Lancelot cut him in the neck.

Corrected entry: King Arthur dies at the end and is put on a pyre that is then drifted out to sea and set on fire by a blazing arrow from afar. This is a Viking funeral rite, hardly suitable for the burial of a great English king.

Correction: Why not? Arthur presumably requested this for his funeral - his wishes would hardly be ignored. Even to this day people make odd requests about their burials.

Correction: In the Dark Ages/Anglo-Saxon era there was a lot of cross-over between the Viking cultures of Scandinavia and the Romano-British, Celtic and Anglo-Saxon cultures of the British Isles. These cultures borrowed and adapted ideas and customs from each other. At Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, in England, archaeologists uncovered the grave of a seventh century Anglo-Saxon king. He had been buried in a ship, and the techniques of burial and the way the grave goods had been placed in the grave were similar to similar ship burials in Viking age Scandinavia.

Continuity mistake: In the scene at the end when King Arthur's funeral raft is floating away, you see white smoke coming from the wood at the foot of the raft. Cut to the shore, and the flaming arrow is lit and shot. Cut to the raft, and the flaming arrow hits the now smokeless raft in the spot where the smoke was. Cut to the shore, then back to the raft, where the fire begins to grow on both sides of the raft, nowhere near the now smokeless and flame-less spot where the flaming arrow hit in the previous shot.

More mistakes in First Knight

Prince Malagant: They say this was once the greatest castle ever built. Now moss grows in the hall where kings once feasted, and peasants cart away the mighty walls stone by stone to make shelters for their pigs. Hah! Such is glory.

More quotes from First Knight

Trivia: Prince Malagant describes the oubliette where he imprisons Guinevere as just having "walls of air." This is a reference to the fate of Merlin, who was sealed away in a "prison of air."

More trivia for First Knight

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